Can adults only be demoted if they want to socialize with a sense of ＂boundary＂？

Meng Qingyan is an associate professor in School of Social Studies, China University of Political Science and Law, and an UPP master in bilibili. He pays attention to the troubles in modern people’s daily life and explains the principles behind them with sociological thinking. Last year, Meng Qingyan released two videos about "socializing" in bilibili, one about "real socializing, dying of social media" and the other about young people’s "social fear". In the comment area of the video, many people find resonance and analyze their struggles in social life like keeping a diary.
　

When I threw all kinds of current social phenomena into problems to him, Meng Qingyan mentioned a point, "In fact, I think the word’ problem’ is sometimes a bit of a problem, because when we use’ problem’ to describe one thing, first,The reaction is to solve it In fact, many problems do not necessarily need to be solved, and they may not all be solved. It is just a fact. " In the words of Meng Qingyan in his new book "Whose Question: Non-standard Answers in Modern Society", the logic of sociology is to care about the general fate of modern people, analyze where the structural tensions faced by individuals come from, and dismantle the mechanisms and principles that affect them. But it is not responsible for answering questions and giving solutions.
　

Socialization may be a "problem" with no answer. We are always troubled, worried and anxious about socializing, and constantly adjust our social countermeasures. When we find that it has no standard answer, we will fall into a new round of anxiety.
　

Meng Qingyan, Associate Professor, School of Social Studies, China University of Political Science and Law.

Sanlian Life Weekly: If we trace back to the source of the topic of "social degradation", we may start with the "social fear" that became popular a few years ago. We find that more and more people admit that they are afraid of society, and there are also various ways to reduce the social burden. How do you understand "social fear" from the perspective of sociology?
　

Meng Qingyan:In fact, I don’t know and don’t want to define the concept of "social fear" accurately. Generally speaking, if we have to describe this word, I think "social fear" can be divided into three types. The first is the fear of social affairs, such as a person who lives alone or is maverick, and is not good at social rhetoric, so he takes social intercourse as a burden. The second is fear of others, which can be summarized as "there are always unruly people who want to harm me". We don’t know the purpose of people we meet in social occasions, because we live in a "stranger society" and always feel that others are uncertain, so we are afraid of socializing. There is also a fear of oneself, which is essentially a fear that you will behave inappropriately in social situations, making others feel that they are unsociable. Because they are worried that others will form such an impression, they resist socializing. Further, I am afraid that my true self will be exposed to others.
　

I think it is quite interesting that the word "social fear" has become a buzzword. In fact, "social fear" is the normal state of people. When everyone enters a new environment and faces strangers, there will be a process of understanding and running-in. In the end, whether the two sides can open their hearts is uncertain. It is normal for this uncertainty to cause tension and worry.However, when we identify this negative feeling that may not have any physiological reaction as a new type of disease and name it "social phobia", it is an expression of "symptoms".
　

Stills of "Your New Life"

The expression of "pathological" is a situation that appears in the evolution of modern society. Foucault mentioned this phenomenon in "Madness and Civilization". Before modern psychiatry, madness was not a pathological condition, but it was a part of human nature, but it exposed the crazy side more severely. Later, people realized that madness was harmful to society, and began to exile and isolate them, and they had to be treated, so psychiatry appeared.

Knowledge is becoming more and more developed and popular, and people need more and more "knowledge" in a certain sense to give a rational explanation for their behavior. This process itself is increasingly emphasizing standardization and measurability. People are constantly looking for the physiological basis of mental illness. This is also a way of measuring people as "things" more and more. In short, when facing the related problems of people’s spiritual world, we are more and more materialized. It is difficult to say that this is the "progress" of human beings, but it can only be said that it is a very common change of ideas under certain historical and social conditions.

Sanlian Life Weekly: We now put many phenomena under the topic of "social degradation", but this concept is rather vague. Some people think that it is "social degradation" to participate in interpersonal communication less, cut off the ties that burden them, or reduce the original close relationship to the level of ordinary relationship. Some people think that the essence of "social degradation" is "upgrading" because it emphasizes the sense of boundary and can bring more accurate companionship. Does this mean that our definition of social interaction is changing? What do you mean by "social degradation"?
　

Meng Qingyan:In fact, it doesn’t matter how to define social interaction. Its concept can be big or small. The definition often serves knowledge production and academic production, and sometimes it is divorced from social reality. There are only a few kinds of social interaction in reality. One kind is social interaction with a clear purpose, such as asking you for help in your career or exchanging resources. We call this kind of social interaction functional. There is also a kind of social interaction with ambiguous purpose. For example, a friend calls you to a dinner party tonight, and you may not know anyone there. We especially like to say, "You know more people, more friends and more roads." The subtext is resource exchange, but the purpose of this exchange is not clear. There is also non-utilitarian social interaction, such as social interaction based on interest circles, partners who eat together, or neighbors who occasionally chat with me in the community, and so on.
　

Nowadays, people are willing to establish more social relationships without burden, with the aim of achieving maximum self-protection and protecting others at the same time.So today’s social interaction is a very "fast food" thing, just like our daily working meals, which are often standardized, as long as they can meet the calorie demand, are not allergic or have diarrhea.There is a book in sociology called "The MacDonald of Society", and so is our social interaction, so our social changes must be in the same frequency as the changes of the whole modern society.
　

Stills of My Liberation Journal

It’s hard to say what "social degradation" is. Being unwilling to socialize can be called social degradation, that is, being unwilling to complicate simple relationships.Emphasizing "precise companionship" can also be called social degradation, because its functionality and purpose are very clear. I don’t judge it, but it is consistent with the basic running trend of our society.
　

The basic operating mechanism of modern society is a division of labor society, which is essentially a society that emphasizes efficiency, so everyone stops at external relations, so Foucault has a saying that "the modern world is a world that stops at the surface." This expression is particularly good. In modern society, our social relationship also stays on the surface. For example, if you tell me that you are "E" or "I", I will have a superficial impression of you. As for what you really look like, I don’t have time or need to know. "Stop at the surface" is enough.
　

The second feature of the division of labor society is that people’s lives and occupations are largely divided. After segmentation, all non-working time is extremely cherished by modern people, because it is a rare time belonging to "me". Every "ego" in modern society is highly sacred. Emphasize "I am the master of my life". Since I have eight to ten hours a day to be in charge of others, I should be in charge of the rest of the time and have absolute dominance. Then in this sense, we will refuse others to enter our world.
　

Sanlian Life Weekly: Compared with "social fear", our more popular expressions may be "I person" and "E person", and its symptomatic meaning has almost disappeared, becoming a social label. What do you think of this change? Why do people like to label themselves like this?
　

Meng Qingyan:Tagging is also a part of the process of knowledge. Although labels are not scientific knowledge, they belong to the process of human self-cognition. It is people who find a shield to justify their behavior in the situation of modern society. Labeling actually happens in every era. When I was at school, my new classmates greeted each other and said, "Where am I from?" This is also a label. Now people may use "I" and "E" to label people when greeting, which is a similar behavior.

It’s just that our social focus has changed. This is an "era of leveling". When the transportation and network were underdeveloped 20 years ago, the distance was strange. Although the regional differences still exist today, they are not as obvious as in the past. In a fully open system with huge liquidity, it is extremely easy for us to obtain information, and the information about the outside world is not so curious. And "what am I like" has become the most important question. The essence of "I", or what "I" want to look like in your eyes, has become a top priority. Labeling is to introduce "what kind of person I am" in the simplest way.
　

Stills of "0.5 Man"

As for why people like to label themselves as "I people" and "E people", first of all, this is an act of building a sense of boundary, because we are particularly concerned about our sense of security. Now more people are willing to say that they are "I", and the subtext is "Don’t be surprised by my performance" or "Don’t bother me, I won’t bother you". This is a self-protection mechanism, the purpose of which is to draw clear boundaries.
　

Secondly, labeling is a quick way to identify. In a sense, whether you are actually an "I person" or an "E person" depends on getting along with each other, but we don’t have time to get acquainted and can only communicate with each other with labels. Let’s go back to Foucault’s sentence, we are in a "world that stops at the surface", which is what it means.
　

Generally speaking, modern people have a stronger sense of boundary. A strong sense of boundary means that everyone is becoming more rational and civilized, and it also means that the connection between you and others is getting thinner and thinner. For example, today, when we speak on the Internet or in reality, we will be more cautious than in the past, because we are afraid of unintentionally offending others and even be careful when joking. In the past, people used to joke, but now it seems that many people have no sense of boundaries.If in the past our sense of boundary was a low wall, only reaching our knees, today our sense of boundary may have reached our necks.
　

Stills of Korean drama My Liberation Journal

Sanlian Life Weekly: As we just talked about, when people put social labels on themselves, more people like to say that they are "social phobia" or "I people". In my opinion, they are all conveying our anxiety and resistance to social interaction. What characteristics of modern society make us feel so anxious about social interaction?
　

Meng Qingyan:"Social fear" is first related to the nature of high division of labor in modern society. Many jobs today didn’t exist in the past. The most obvious function of a highly divided social system is to improve the overall efficiency of society, but it also means a heterogeneous society constructed by strangers. Although we say today that we can stay at home with a mobile phone, it is the era of small farmers that can really stay at home. At that time, a person or a family was a production line, a closed system and self-sufficient. After mankind came out of the agricultural society, this closed system was basically broken and replaced by the production system. Today, the number of people involved in completing one thing has become extremely large. To take a taxi, we have to contact the driver of the online car, eat with the delivery staff, and buy things with the courier. If you want to survive in such a system, you must contact all kinds of external sexual relations every day, that is, strangers.

Today, we hope to keep many relationships at the level of external sexual relations. When it begins to develop endogenously, we begin to be nervous.Because we generally think that the endogenous relationship is complex, blood relationship and geography are endogenous relations, which cannot be quantified by contract, while the exogenous relationship is relatively simple, which is bound by external contract.
　

Stills of "What Day Were You Born"

For example, let us have dinner with colleagues after work and go out to play together, which means that there is an extra layer of relationship outside the external professional relationship, and things become complicated in the eyes of modern people. Some relationships used to be internal, but now we want to define them with simple external relationships. For example, some people may want to keep their distance from their relatives, and when they can’t, we will feel social burden.

Another point is that our social scope has expanded and social content has become more uncertain. I don’t think there was such a "social interaction" in the past, and people’s social content was very simple and definite. For example, our parents, who were born in the 1950s and 1960s, are basically visiting relatives and colleagues, who are also acquaintances living in a big courtyard. Today’s technical means allow us to socialize in many non-professional fields, such as I have many communities and partners.They are all "strangers" at the beginning of their relationship. Faced with strangers full of uncertainty, our awareness of self-protection has gradually increased, which is also a reason for "social fear".
　

Sanlian Life Weekly: Theoretically speaking, external sexual relations should make people’s relationship more rational and simple, and also make usThere are more social choices, but now everyone’s social anxiety has not decreased. I saw you write a sentence in Whose Question: Non-standard Answer of Modern Society: "The modern society full of external treaties limits our need to connect with each other mentally and emotionally." How to understand this?
　

Meng Qingyan:A society full of external contracts means that we are more willing to define our relationship with others by contractual relationship. For example, young people like to say "I talk to him about salary, and he talks to me about feelings", or love to talk about "PUA in the workplace", which means that they want their relationship with the unit to be limited to the scope agreed in the contract. Generally speaking, our relationship with strangers is also bound by external contracts, such as taking up legal weapons to solve disputes. Contracts or laws are external contracts.

In fact, the external contract is very similar to the sense of boundary I just mentioned, that is, it draws a boundary for all human behaviors. It’s just that in the past, our communication boundary was determined by mutual communication, but now we hope it is as clear as stipulated in the contract. The more we understand the world in an external way, the easier it is to form an external relationship with the world. The advantage of external sexual relations is simplicity, and it has a very clear set of standards. But they don’t touch the soul in essence, or motivation. For example, the law can’t be judged by motive, because motive is what people think inside, and it can’t be guessed. It can only be judged according to the seriousness of superficial behavior.

Favorite flower"stills

Because it doesn’t touch the soul, it can’t form the inner connection between people.Living in a world dominated by external contracts, we will naturally move towards "matter-oriented" and only look at things without looking at people.For example, you are my friend, and you occupy my land. I want to sue you legally, which is no problem in modern society with law as the main axis. But maybe you treat people well as a friend, which is not considered in the external contract. In fact, who can you be friends with in real interpersonal communication? Do you become friends with him because of his compliance? Many times, we become friends with a person just because we fully understand him and even tolerate his unreasonable behavior.

Of course, some relationships can’t be limited to the scope of external sexual relations and can’t be explained by the external logic of modern society, so we will resist those relationships, because that means more complicated human nature. For example, our relationship with our parents should not be a contract in theory, but a natural emotional connection. Today, we are particularly used to thinking about the world with external relations, because it is simple and legally guaranteed. Now some people may even want to have a contract with their parents, such as to what extent you raise me, I will support you, and finally you will give me a corresponding share of the property. It can make things simple, and at the same time, you have to accept a certain sense of emotional thinness.
　

Therefore, the external world will have a certain impact on people’s communication. The relationship between people is becoming more and more simple and functional.On the one hand, we need the main axis of the modern world to be progress and civilization, which requires externalities. On the other hand, the more external sexual relations we have in our life, the more lonely we are, because no one can enter your world and you don’t care about others.
　

Man is a strange species, and he has some external needs that cannot be solved. Generally speaking, man still needs to enter other people’s world and others need to enter my world.We always wonder if there is anything that can keep me from being lonely and ensure my sense of boundary. This is the awkward point for everyone.
　

Photo courtesy of vision china

Sanlian Life Weekly: Modern people put "self" in a very high position, and taking "me" as the center is a very prominent point in our social life now. For example, we always want social relationships to be based on the interests and needs of "me", but social interaction is communication with others. Is the social life based on "I" really established?
　

Meng Qingyan:Our world really emphasizes "I", and the concept of modern people is particularly developed. His "factory setting" means "you should be an independent person", "you should be responsible for your own life" and "you should choose your own life". There is nothing wrong with this, but there are several bugs in it.

The first bug is that it is not up to you to come into this world, and the social environment in which you grew up is not up to you. This part is far from personal choice. The second bug is that there is no lonely "I" in the world. If there is only one you in the world, then all adjectives in the world will lose their meaning, because without a frame of reference, height, beauty, ugliness, fatness, good or bad, good or evil, extroversion and introversion are all impossible to talk about. People’s cognition of themselves must be put in a group of people.
　

Fei Xiaotong has a saying "I look at people and look at me", which is used to explain charles cooley’s "self in the mirror" theory. We are right about ourselves.The cognition of oneself comes from the impression of people around us, and both "I person" and "E person" are produced in this frame of reference. If there is no one else in the world of "I", all the concepts about "I" are an empty bubble, which will burst with a poke.
　

There is an old saying in China that "the unpleasant things are often nine times out of ten, but they are no different from the speakers". Some people say that it is sad to say that "you can be no different from the speaker", but I think this sentence is very lucky. It is precisely because of this "two or three" that you can establish an understanding of yourself. He can be a parent, a friend or a colleague.What is important is that you grow up in a real and common life and form an understanding of "I". In this sense, I think "the other" is still indispensable in modern people’s lives.
　

"If a person"stills

Sanlian Life Weekly: In the Internet age, many of our relationships are based on virtual connections. Why is the "other" who grew up with us in the real environment still important?
　

Meng Qingyan:Face-to-face communication between people has a kind of reality that online can’t replace.It contains real-time feedback, I can see your expression, posture, and read what you don’t need to say. For example, during the online class during the epidemic, I was not used to it, and I felt particularly tired, because I couldn’t feel other people’s reactions in a common space in real time, which forced me to output in one direction.

Besides, I am an empiricist. What is experience? I explain these two words very simply, that is, "going through" and "experiencing". They must be physical.It doesn’t mean that everyone’s social interaction should be restored to offline, but offline social interaction must exist, because it is essential for you to associate with the real world.
　

Today, we have many virtual simulation technologies, as if you can understand and experience without going somewhere or meeting someone. But there is always a distance between direct sensory experience and indirect sensory experience. Only face-to-face contact can "come back". Take the quarrel as an example. When we type online, we often say it to ourselves. We don’t accept refutation, and others don’t care what you say. It’s easy to fall into unilateral speech.But in the real world, we coexist in a physical space, and when we have differences, we sit down and talk. My purpose is to hope that you can understand why I disagree, and I also hope that you can understand each other. This is the real communication.
　

Hometown, hope that you are well."stills

Sanlian Life Weekly: Now that we emphasize the sense of boundary and long for deep connection, it seems difficult to find a social form that makes us comfortable. Where will our social life develop?
　

Meng Qingyan:Socialization has suffered a lot in today’s era, because atomization and individualization are the basic trends of our times, and it will continue for a period of time. But I’m not so pessimistic. People will always be influenced by their own times. Maybe you can’t get rid of the limitations of the times and the current lifestyle in reality, but people can consciously realize that they are influenced by the times. People have iterative ability, self-purification ability and self-repair trend.History is like a pendulum. Maybe we are in an over-individualized and lonely stage now, but after a certain critical point, the pendulum will swing back, and we will look for the sense of connection in the past. At the same time, maybe there will be a new way of connection in the future, although I don’t know what it is now.

(This article is selected from Sanlian Life Weekly, No.46, 2023)